في وداع زياد الرحباني

Farewell to Ziad Rahbani

Ziad created the lingua franca of post-war Lebanon — through it a generation found each other across front lines and carried their innocence to October 17.

في صداقة الياس خوري

On the Friendship of Elias Khoury

I have not yet said goodbye to Elias Khoury — for him, culture was a moral act and friendship its highest commitment.

فواز طرابلسي: «زمن اليسار الجديد» سؤال النشأة وسياق التحولات

Fawwaz Traboulsi: "The Time of the New Left" - The Question of Origins and the Context of Transformations

Either the left becomes the party of answers to neoliberalism and social justice — or religious and right-wing extremism takes its place.

مجموعة «لبنان الاشتراكي» السنوات الأولى ١٩٦٥-١٩٦٨

The "Socialist Lebanon" Group: The Early Years 1965-1968

Bidayat

From the heart of the "Lebanon Socialist" experience and its self-critique, a contemporary question emerges: Can social justice, by ensuring equal opportunities and fair resource distribution, socio-economically hollow out sectarianism and curb sectarian grievances?

عن الماركسية والتاريخ والثورات والدولة الوطنية والمجتمع المدني والطائفية وأشياء أخرى

On Marxism, History, Revolutions, the Nation-State, Civil Society, Sectarianism, and Other Things

الترا صوت

In a comprehensive intellectual review, the author re-examines fundamental concepts and experiences in the Arab world, calling for a critical, self-reliant approach that transcends imported ideas and simplistic dichotomies.

بدايات تختتم عيدها العاشر وتعلّق الصدور مؤقتًا

Bidayat Concludes Its Tenth Anniversary and Temporarily Suspends Publication

Bidayat

After ten years of publication, “Bidayat” magazine is temporarily suspending its work due to funding challenges, hoping to find a qualitative shift that ensures its continuity or concludes its venture.

عن الطوائف والطبقات والحروب الاهلية

On Sects, Classes, and Civil Wars

The weakest expression of societal and power relations is the political one — manufacturing experience demands tools beyond politics.

مذكرات جورج بطل ٣ فرج الله حلو في موقفه الجريء وعزله واستشهاده

The Memoirs of George al-Batal 3: Farajallah al-Helou in His Courageous Stance, His Isolation, and His Martyrdom

Bidayat

I am Farajallah Helou, there is no other responsible person — his last words before torture killed him and acid dissolved his body. Heikal denied he ever existed.

Edward Said in Translation – The personal and the academic

A lecture on translating Said and the friendship: "Your language is convoluted—I plan to deconstruct it and reconstruct in Arabic." Twenty years barred from the US, and emails about Tahiyya Karioka, Cyd Charisse, and Oslo as "the peace of the weak."

جورج البطل، آخر البلاشفة ٢ شيوعيّون في «حوادث الـ٥٨»

George al-Batal, the Last Bolshevik (2): Communists in the 1958 Crisis

Bidayat

"You're good at demonstrations but can't shoot," Jumblatt told them — so the communists smuggled three hundred weapons past his own checkpoints.

جورج البطل، آخر البلاشفة مذكرات قائد شيوعي من لبنان

George al-Batal, the Last of the Bolsheviks: Memoirs of a Communist Leader from Lebanon

Bidayat

At age five he insisted on what he knew despite his father's slap, and solved a murder — the tannery taught him that a generous employer curses communists when a worker carries a clock.

Ce n’est pas le multiconfessionnalisme, mais un système oligarchique qui gouverne le Liban – Interview Mediapart

It Is Not Multi-Confessionalism, but an Oligarchic System That Governs Lebanon - Mediapart Interview

Mediapart

An interview with Mediapart: it is not the confessional system that governs Lebanon but an oligarchy in which the political and capitalist classes have fused—and sectarianism is the ideal system for whitewashing everything.

سليمان تقي الدين، وداعاً

Suleiman Taqi al-Din, Farewell

Bidayat

He never stopped fighting in life, and never stopped fighting in death — and the red star remained his compass after the comrades dispersed.

كيف نفهم ما يجري في لبنان؟ حوار مع «فواز طرابلسي»

How Do We Understand What Is Happening in Lebanon? A Dialogue with Fawwaz Traboulsi

The October 17 uprising is unprecedented in its peaceful popular movement against Lebanon's post-civil war system, yet it faces a paradox between its aspirations for change and the challenges of "excess of politics" and lack of cross-sectarian organization.

Social Classes and Political Power in Lebanon

Heinrich Boll Stiftung

In Lebanon, where classes are denied, economic and political power intertwine in a rentier and sectarian system that deepens exploitation and leads to a "mafiocracy" increasing social polarization.

interview with Fawwaz Traboulsi on the Syrian revolution

An interview (2013): "Syrian revolutionaries owe nobody an apology"—militarization was forced by the regime, and the US seeks to salvage regimes through a military-Islamist assemblage. The opposition must crystallize its vision now.

عصام النقّري (ابو ربيع)

Issam al-Naqqari (Abu Rabi')

Survived war and resistance unscathed — killed by a hit-and-run whose driver fled. The easiest thing in this country: commit a crime and escape punishment.

30 على انطلاقة «جمول»: شهادة عن فترة التأسيس

30 Years Since the Launch of the LNRF: Testimony on the Founding Period

Bidayat

Don't shoot us, we're withdrawing — the Israeli army left Beirut after JAMOUL operations reached one every five hours.

محمد دكروب ليس سنديانة

Muhammad Dakroub Is Not an Oak Tree

Dakroub is not an oak — he made of the laborer an intellectual and kept the intellectual a laborer. "The man who walks opens a new horizon with every step."

مقابلة مجلة – المستقبل العربي

Al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi Magazine Interview

Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi

From memoir to sectarianism, one thread runs through it all: no Marxism as a closed creed, no unity as nostalgia, but history understood from inside its conflicts.

التعريف والمسيرة

The Definition and the Journey

To history through lived experience rather than the university, and to writing as a way of forging experience: that is how the “young man in red” deepened in color.

Our Lady of the Rocks

A literary text on Dhofar: a Freudian slip of the camera turned a shepherdess into a madonna — the tubercular woman asks for medicine from strangers who carry everything except what helps, and the unknown name endures across wars and exiles.

حوار العربي الجديد

Al-Araby al-Jadeed Interview

Al-Araby al-Jadeed

This diversity is not dispersion: from history to popular culture, one thread runs through it all, writing for the widest possible readership and refashioning experience.

شهادة عن فترة تأسيس «جبهة المقاومة الوطنية اللبنانية»

Testimony on the Founding Period of the Lebanese National Resistance Front

As-Safir

A direct testimony about the clandestine founding of the Lebanese National Resistance Front (Jammoul) in the final days of the 1982 Siege of Beirut, and its role in accelerating the Israeli occupation's withdrawal.